Shanxi Offensive Operation
The Shanxi Offensive Operation was the first major offensive operation carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. From 3 to 29 July 1937, hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops stationed in Manchukuo launched a massive invasion of northern China and crushed the Shanxi Clique, ruled by warlord Yan Xishan. The Japanese also clashed with Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang forces and Mao Zedong's communists, but they faced no significant resistance. On 29 July 1937, Shanxi surrendered to Japan, and it was annexed into the Japanese empire. Background In 1936, Japan was ruled by the stern imperialist Emperor Hirohito and governed by Prime Minister Keisuke Okada, a member of the Toseiha faction of the Imperial Japanese Army. The government was ruled by the Control Clique, and it also had elements of the fascist Kokumin Domei party as well. The cabinet was therefore inclined to favor nationalism and militarism, and Japan built up its armed forces on a massive scale. Throughout 1936, newly-created Japanese armies were ferried from Tokyo to Dalian in the Kwantung leased territory of northern China by Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa's large fleet, and the Japanese massed along the Manchurian border with China, threatening their neighbors. These neighbors were the Shanxi Clique, an autonomous region of China led by the Qing dynasty loyalist Yan Xishan and ruled by the "Protect the Emperor Society". The Shanxi Clique's army was small, and it was led mostly by anti-Bolshevik Russian and Baltic German emigres who had seen action in the Russian Civil War. However, this led to the Shanxi troops being drilled in the old-fashioned ways, and the Shanxi military lacked the same modern and professional quality that the Imperial Japanese Army possessed. The lack of modernization in the Shanxi army would ultimately prove fatal. The road to war was inescapable after 5 January 1937, when Prime Minister Okada decided to remove the two conservative members of his cabinet, Armament Minister Machida Chuji and Security Minister Fumio Goto. He replaced them with military entrepreneur Kazue Shoda and Security Minister Keisuke Fujie, both Kokumin Domei members. Now, the fascist Kokumin Domei held a third of the government's seats, while the other two-thirds were controlled by the Toseiha expansionists. There was no more Minsei Party opposition to face, and the Japanese began to plan out the war. There would be three advances: one in the Inner Mongolia region towards Xangdin Hural, one towards Jining and Datong in the center of northern Shanxi, and another along the coast with the East China Sea. These offensives would be carried out by several large armies, and these armies had been stationed on the Manchukuo border for years, anticipating the start of the war. Start of the Sino-Japanese War On 3 July 1937, Japanese and Chinese troops clashed near Beiping in the "Marco Polo Bridge incident". This incident was quickly solved with negotiations between the troops from two sides, but new incidents flared up across the borderlands. Japan decided to begin offensive operations, and they launched their large Shanxi invasion, which had been in the works since March of 1936. The Japanese armies poured into Shanxi, taking the city of Peking without much opposition. On 6 July, the Japanese took Tangshan with just 30 losses, while 385 Shanxi troops were killed. The Japanese proceeded to seize Tianjin as their armies in central Shanxi and on the coast flanked the area, and the Japanese pushed south. The Japanese concluded combat operations on 29 July 1937 when the government of Shanxi decided to surrender due to a lack of national unity in the face of the Japanese onslaught. Aftermath ]]The Japanese suffered very light casualties in the short campaign, and they annexed a large region of northern China. Rather than stay as occupation forces, they decided to give control of northern Shanxi to a puppet state known as Mengkukuo, which would be expanded during the war with the Xibei San Ma clique in the following months. The Shanxi operation was executed flawlessly, and the Japanese prepared for offensives against the Ma family as well as the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek. Category:Second Sino-Japanese War Category:Battles